509 research outputs found
Active SLAM for autonomous underwater exploration
Exploration of a complex underwater environment without an a priori map is beyond the state of the art for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Despite several efforts regarding simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and view planning, there is no exploration framework, tailored to underwater vehicles, that faces exploration combining mapping, active localization, and view planning in a unified way. We propose an exploration framework, based on an active SLAM strategy, that combines three main elements: a view planner, an iterative closest point algorithm (ICP)-based pose-graph SLAM algorithm, and an action selection mechanism that makes use of the joint map and state entropy reduction. To demonstrate the benefits of the active SLAM strategy, several tests were conducted with the Girona 500 AUV, both in simulation and in the real world. The article shows how the proposed framework makes it possible to plan exploratory trajectories that keep the vehicle’s uncertainty bounded; thus, creating more consistent maps.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Geometry-Aware Learning of Maps for Camera Localization
Maps are a key component in image-based camera localization and visual SLAM
systems: they are used to establish geometric constraints between images,
correct drift in relative pose estimation, and relocalize cameras after lost
tracking. The exact definitions of maps, however, are often
application-specific and hand-crafted for different scenarios (e.g. 3D
landmarks, lines, planes, bags of visual words). We propose to represent maps
as a deep neural net called MapNet, which enables learning a data-driven map
representation. Unlike prior work on learning maps, MapNet exploits cheap and
ubiquitous sensory inputs like visual odometry and GPS in addition to images
and fuses them together for camera localization. Geometric constraints
expressed by these inputs, which have traditionally been used in bundle
adjustment or pose-graph optimization, are formulated as loss terms in MapNet
training and also used during inference. In addition to directly improving
localization accuracy, this allows us to update the MapNet (i.e., maps) in a
self-supervised manner using additional unlabeled video sequences from the
scene. We also propose a novel parameterization for camera rotation which is
better suited for deep-learning based camera pose regression. Experimental
results on both the indoor 7-Scenes dataset and the outdoor Oxford RobotCar
dataset show significant performance improvement over prior work. The MapNet
project webpage is https://goo.gl/mRB3Au.Comment: CVPR 2018 camera ready paper + supplementary materia
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